Partnership building
by bubbly123
Summary: What happens when Booth and Brennan are forced to go to a partnership building seminar in North Carolina for an entire week?Angry words, sentamental moments, and a whole lot of "partnership building".
1. The seminar

It was a wonderful Friday afternoon in late December, snow was falling lovely outside the window, spreading a thick white blanket across the front entrance to the J.Edgar Hoover building. I was half asleep, honestly, with the cold air outside and the warm thick air _inside _it was almost imposable to not feel relaxed and content, even when you were sitting at a desk with your feet propped up at an odd angle and your neck twisting at an even odder angle.

My eyelids drooped slowly and soon I was finding it extremely difficult to keep my eyes open for more than two seconds, all I wanted to do was go home and crawl under my sheets and sleep, but I knew I couldn't. I had at least three to four more hours of work to endure before I could go home and this seemed like an extremely large amount of time, especially with all the paper work I had to do.

I was shaken from my "napping" by my phone ringing loudly. Sure, this annoyed me greatly, but I was happy that the phone had snapped me back to reality before someone I worked with did.

"Booth." I said sleepily, adding a yawn almost as soon as my last name left my mouth.

"Hi, Booth, did you finish your paper work on Daniel Harper's case?"

I sighed and stretched, it was my forensic anthropologist partner, Dr.Temperance Brennan, probably the last person I wanted to hear from as sleepy as I was. She was sure to badger me about my lack of finished paper work, and this would only succeed in making me even more sleepy and greatly increasing my urge to fake sickness and go home early.

"No." I replied, the tiniest traces of a whine in my voice.

"Booth! I need you to finish your paper work for the hearing!" She said, her voice reaching that certain pitch that assured me she was about to start nagging me about something, sure enough as soon as the thought had passed through my mind, she started.

"You've got to be more responsible with your work, Booth! I can't go to the court hearing if you don't have your paper work done! We both know that Kelly Richards killed Daniel Harper, and we can't prove that if our evidence isn't presentable!"

I rubbed my eyes and yawned again, I put the phone down and stood and stretched, she'd go on like this for a little while, there was really no need for me to listen to what she was saying. After leaving my office and getting a cup of coffee I came back and heard the last bit of her rant.

". . .you see, Booth?"

"Yeah, sure, Bones." I said, not really knowing what I was agreeing to.

I sipped my coffee as Brennan huffed, she knew that I hadn't been listening, she always did.

"Booth! You didn't listen to a word I said, did you?"

"No, I heard some of it." I replied trying to protect myself from further rantings.

Brennan huffed again and I ran a hand threw my hair then slapped myself hard in the face, trying to prevent from drifting off again.

"What did you do?" I heard Brennan say as she heard the loud splat that that sounded when I'd hit myself.

"Nothing." I yawned.

I put my head in my hand that wasn't holding my phone and propped my elbows on my desk as Dr.Lance Sweets entered my office, I groaned audibly into the phone and Brennan asked me, once again, what _that _was.

"Sweets is here, Bones. You want me to put you on speaker?"

"Yes." She said almost before the words had left my mouth.

Sweets sat himself down in a chair in front of my desk and smiled his annoying smile at me, why did he have to be so. . .Therapyish, all the time?

"Agent Booth, are you talking to Dr.Brennan?" Why did he always have to ask obvious questions too?

I nodded my head and Sweets looked at me smugly, like he knew everything. I rolled my eyes and proceeded to think of all of the creative ways I could slap that smug smile off his face. I really did _not _feel like messing with _Dr. _Sweets today. I sighed and put Brennan on speaker phone, she could argue with him today, I wasn't awake enough to think of any clever come backs. . .at least not yet.

"Dr.Brennan! How are you?" Sweets addressed the phone, I rolled my eyes again.

"Fine, Dr.Sweets, and you?" Brennan replied in a bored tone.

"I'm good."

I shook my head and rubbed my face. "Sweets, why are you in my office?"

Sweets seemed slightly put off by this and I marveled at how long it took him to actually answer the question.

"I came to inform you that we will not be having a therapy session this Saturday. . ."

"Couldn't you have just called me instead of coming to see me?" I asked.

"Agent Booth, if you'll let me finish. The only reason I came to tell you is because I didn't want you to hang up on me when I told you that I'm going to be sending the two of you to a partnership building seminar this Saturday instead!"

I groaned and glared at Sweets, those partnership building seminars never ended well. Well, at least that's what I'd heard from other agents. Charlie Sears said they were the most boring things he and his partner, Adam Barnes, had ever been to, and Gretchen Thomas and Ben Boars had been separated after they came back from one because they had almost killed each other on the way back from the seminar.

Brennan seemed to agree that this was something that she and I did not need, for as soon as Sweets' words had set in, she began angrily ranting her oppinion on the matter.

"We don't need to go to a partnership building seminar! We work perfectly fine together! We don't need to build our partnership anymore! I mean. . ."

"Dr.Brennan!" Sweets cut over her. "This isn't because I think that you two need to "build" your partnership, it's because I want you two to see what it will be like to cope in an environment that has nothing to do with your day to day jobs, and unfortunately you can't find a place like that in DC, so you'll be attending this conference in North Carolina."

"And who says that we absoloutly have to go?" I asked, searching for even the smallest loop whole that could get us out of going to North Carolina.

"The director of the FBI. I put in a request that you two go with a few other agents to the seminar, and he said that that was fine." Sweets answered confidently. Ok, if my boss had said I had to go, then I had to go, I absolutely did not want to loose my job because I didn't want to take a short trip with my partner. How bad could this seminar thing possibly be?

"Fine, Sweets, we'll go." I agreed, not knowing what I'd just gotten myself into.

This was going to be a long week.


	2. Emily, James, David and Lily

**_Please review! I will be very very happy if you do! Thanks!_**

Emily Davidson jumped onto the wooden park bench and walked it's length twice before stopping and glancing at her watch for the five hundredth time in the last half hour, her partner, James Rein, who was currently sitting on the wooden park bench staring at an ant that was crawling in and out of the cracks in the side walk, pulled his attention from the ant and glanced up at Emily.

"Would you please calm down? you're seriously gonna explode or something if you don't sit down."

Emily glared at James and flopped herself down on the bench beside of him. "If they don't hurry up I'm leaving without them."

"Emily! We're at least an hour early! They've got nearly thirty minutes before they're officially late!"

Emily huffed and crossed her arms, she glared at the fog that her breath created in the cold winter air. "Why couldn't we have picked somewhere inside to meet? Somewhere that has heat would've been really nice."

James shrugged and went back to watching the ant.

Just then a black SUV pulled up and two occupants jumped out. Emily hopped up from the bench and pulled James up with her, who hadn't even noticed the SUV and was still staring at the tiny ant with mild interest.

"Hey, are you guys Temperance Brennan and Seeley Booth? The agents we're supposed to go to the seminar with?" Emily said as she jumped in front of the man.

The man nodded and looked Emily over with an eyebrow cocked. "And you guys must be, Emily Davidson and James Rein."

"That's us." James answered as he pulled his arm from his partner's grasp.

"It's nice to meet you, you can call me Booth." Booth said as he extended his hand in greeting.

Emily shook it happily and nodded her head, her long light brown pig tail flying up and down as she did so. "I would say you could call me Davidson, but I'm not supposed to let people address me using my last name while I'm on this trip, so you can call me Emily."

"And you can call me, James, or Rein, I don't really care all that much." James said as Booth's partner came around from the other side of the car, where she had apparently been on the phone to someone.

"This is Dr.Temperance Brennan, she's my partner." Booth introduced Brennan, who smiled a small smile in greeting.

Emily offered her hand to the anthropologist and smiled brightly."Hi, I'm Emily!"

Brennan took it and smiled a considerably smaller smile than Emily's. "Nice to meet you, I'm Temperance."

James offered his hand as well, and Brennan shook it as well. "James." He said simply, and Brennan nodded.

"Well. . ." Booth said as he stuck his hands into his jacket pockets to try and keep them warm. ". . .are we waiting for anyone else?"

Emily nodded, but James spoke. "Yeah, two other people, Lily Brookes and David Holmes."

"Well, then why did Sweets only tell us about you two?" Temperance asked as she to stuck her hands into her pockets, both Booth and Brennan had forgotten to bring gloves.

"Well, that would be because they only just got told they had to go to the seminar yesterday, because they had the fifth blow out this week in the halls of the bureau. Cullen had a fit." Emily said as a red car pulled up behind Booth and Brennan's SUV.

A curly headed women stepped out of the passenger's side and made her way over to the four agents.

"Hi." She said.

Emily waved a small wave in her direction and then looked around her and waved at a man, who was apparently her partner.

"So, you guys must be Booth and Brennan." The curly headed women said as she extended her hand to them. "I'm Lily Brookes."

Lily's partner came up behind her, his messy black hair flying in all directions from the cold wind. "I'm Special Agent David Holmes." He said and extended his hand as well.

Lily rolled her eyes and crossed her arms. "You know you don't always have to introduce yourself as "special agent" David Holmes. It makes you sound pompous."

David put his hands on his hips and glared at her. "Why are you trying to start something with me?"

"I'm not, it's just you sound like a pompous a. . ."

"Lily! David!" Emily exclaimed, interrupting the two. "Can't you two get a long for five minutes?"

Lily bit her tongue and nodded her head. "Fine."

David crossed his arms and shrugged. "Fine."

James grinned at David and punched him on the arm playfully. "But you know, you do have to admit, it does kind of make you sound pompousy."

David smirked at James and gave an apologetic look to Brennan and Booth.

Emily clapped her hands together and jumped up slightly. "So, who's car are we taking?"


	3. Are we there yet?

**_Sorry I havn't written in a while, thank you for all of the reviews! I wrote this one in Brennan's point of view, only because I wrote the first chapter in Booth's. I probably got her a little off character in a few places, and I know the ending was kind of bad, but I was working quickly to get this chapter out before a certain point, and I still didn't get it out quickly enough. but, regardless, please review and tell me what you think!

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I sighed heavily as we were stopped at yet another painstakingly long stop light. Why did everyone and everything had to stop us from getting to this stupid seminar? I gritted my teeth in annoyance as Emily, yet again, asked "are we there yet?". The women was most likely very near my own age, and here she was acting like a three year old child. I turned swiftly towards the back seat, ignoring Booth's warning glance.

"We weren't there the last time you said that, agent Davidson. It would be imposable for us to have reached our destination in five short minutes when the hotel we're supposed to be staying at is yet another half hour away."

_"Sure, I probably said it a little mean, but after saying 'are we there yet' so many times, it's imposable to be kind!" _I thought.

"You know you don't have to call me agent Davidson, Emily would be fine." Emily said as she turned her eyes away from me.

"Emily! You're stepping on my foot!" James exclaimed.

"Sorry, maybe if your feet weren't so big. Gees, if you don't like your feet being stepped on then move them out of my way!"

James scowled at her and crossed his arms. "There's only so much room in this car, Emily, and, to be honest, you're practically sitting right on top of me!"

"Deal with it!"

James frowned at his partner and adverted his eyes away from her. I sighed again, they were being way to immature, and it was starting to get on my last nerve! I crossed my legs tightly together and turned the nob on the radio up full blast, hoping to quieten them down a little.

Booth looked at me curiously from where he sat at the driver's seat, I knew he was just as annoyed as I, but it just so happens that I have far less patients, or people skills, to hide it as well as he does.

"What?" I mouthed as the base rumbled the car.

Booth rolled his eyes and flashed an amused grin at me. I just turned back around and stared outside the window at the passing cars. Booth had hated that we'd had to take his car, and I knew it, he barely let me touch anything in his car, and I was his partner, I couldn't imagine him liking four, highly immature FBI agents to ride in the back of his car. But, unfortunately, his SUV was the only thing that could fit all six of us, plus luggage, at least half way comfortably.

--

An hour of driving, and mixed up directions later, we pulled up to the front of the hotel we were staying at. Personally, I was extremely relieved to see the tall, elegant building, just in time to I suppose, I was nearly ready to scream, loudly and obnoxiously, in frustrated anger at the four agents that were accompanying us.

Booth parked the car and jumped out of it, stretching out his legs and back. I followed and copied his rutean, shortly accompanied by the rest of the members of out small group, who repeated the same ritual.

When all had been stretched, and we'd made sure we were at the right place for the fifth time, we got our lugage from the car and paraded to the front lobby. A mixture of FBI agents and hotel staff met us in a frazzled frenzy. When we finally got to the front desk to check in, Lily and David had already started bickering again, something we'd been saved from in the car, accounting to David's sleeping.

"You don't even know that!" Lily practically scrame in her partner's face as many curious onlookers passed them with curious, and some amused, gazes.

"Well it's not like you know!" David replied in a slightly less boisterous voice.

"Just shut your fat, ugly, good for nothing, c. . ."

"Agent Brookes, Agent Holmes!" Booth broke over Lily before she could finish her sentence. "You're going to have to sign in."

I smirked, of course I knew that was nowhere near what he'd actually wanted to say, though what he'd said was true, it was only a way to get them to stop their fighting.

"Oh." Lily said and smiled at Booth politely. David gave a forced smile as well and followed his partner as she made her way to the front desk.

"We don't fight that much, do we?" Booth wispered to me as we made our way to the room that we'd insisted we'd share.

"Well, if we do, not about stupid things like that. If you ask me they shouldn't be partners, they don't even work together well, it seems!" I answered as I swished the card key into the door and opened the hotel room door.

Booth nodded, appearantly relieved that people didn't see our partnership the way he saw theirs, or the way I saw it.

"I guess we're just on of a kind, Bones."

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End file.
